Galileo's Daughter
by Timberlake Wertenbaker
based on the book by Dava Sobell
The Program in Performing Arts' Theatre Program is proud to present a concert reading of Galileo's Daughter, a new work by British Playwright Timberlake Wertenbaker on Monday, April 24 at 7:30pm in the Gonda Theatre, home of the Royden B. Davis S. J. Performing Arts Center.
Set against Galileo's conflict with the Church over his insistence that the sun is the centre of the solar system, Galileo's Daughter shows the interplay of four people who circle each other like heavenly bodies: a fundamentalist young priest, the Pope Urban VIII, Galileo and his daughter, Maria Celeste (Maria of the Skies). Maria, Galileo's illegitimate daughter and the light of his life, is a convent-girl who becomes her father's devoted assistant. Tracing this clash between faith, science and love, the play examines the power of love and truth.
Fully staged in 2004 with the Peter Hall Company at the Theatre Royal Bath in Bath, England, this reading is a revised script that will be the first introduction of the play to American audiences. The reading will be directed by Maya Roth, Artistic Director for the Davis Performing Arts Center and will feature several Georgetown theater minors working together with professional actors, including DC favorite Susan Lynskey, who also teaches at Georgetown, and LA stage and film actor, Cliff Osmand as Galileo. Jesuit Priest Paul McCarren reads the rolw of a priest in this presentation, with graduating seniors Annie Rossie in the role of "Galileo's Daughter," and Adam Aguirre as Father Anthony.
Ms. Wertenbaker, currently Davis Visiting Professor in Theater at Georgetown University, grew up in the Basque Country in Southwest France. Her many plays include The Love of the Nightingale, Credible Witness, After Darwin, Three Birds Alighting on a Field and Our Country's Good, winner of the Laurence Olivier Play of the Year Award, the New York Drama Critics' Circle award for Best New Foreign Play, and which was nominated for 6 Tonys. She has translated the plays of Sophocles, Euripides, Marivaux and de Filippo and is currently working on a translation of Racine's Phedre and a final version of Gabriela Preissova's Jenufa , which she recently workshopped at the Davis Centre. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a member of PEN.
This fall marked the opening of the Royden B. Davis S.J. Performing Arts Center, the only building in Georgetown's 225-year history designed for arts education, and is home to the Theater Program. The mission of the Davis is to foster collaboration within the university, across disciplines, and beyond, and the Theater Program isvery proud to be presenting Galileo's Daughter as a public culminating event tied to Ms. Wertenbaker's residency at Georgetown College. It is an honor to host the internationally-acclaimed playwright, and her new work, at Georgetown as well as in Washington, D.C. The event is free and open to the public.
